Andong Zheng (b. 1992, Hefei, China) lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Zheng's works begin from the friction between being translated and translating oneself. Through gaps in history and chance encounters, his curiosity takes shape through lens-based media and their expanded forms. In his practice, the image is a vessel in which contradiction and ambiguity remain unresolved, and a site where asymmetrical power structures surface. By connecting different contexts, he traces how meaning is shaped and translated across geographies and histories, and how it shifts through acts of intervention.
He received a B.Eng. in Automotive Engineering from Tongji University in 2016, an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019, and an MA in Photography & Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, in 2025. In 2026, Zheng was nominated for FUTURES Photography by FOTODOK and selected for British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch. In the same year, he received the Jury Prize of the Harry Pennings Award. He was previously shortlisted for Jimei x Arles Discovery Award (2024).
His work has been exhibited at numerous international institutions and galleries, including Photo Elysée, Center régional de la photographie Hauts-De-France, Guangdong Times Museum, He Xiangning Art Museum, Fotografiska Shanghai, Ames Yavuz, and ClampArt. His work has also appeared in publications such as The Routledge Companion to Photography, Representation and Social Justice, British Journal of Photography, and Chinese Photography.
How to (Un)Name a Tree: Three Trajectories
Lecture performance over mijn langlopende project How to (Un)Name a Tree, waarin ik een historische controverse rond de naamgeving van drie nauw verwante dennensoorten in Oost-Azië onderzoek, en de verbanden met koloniale geschiedenis, geopolitiek en kennisproductie. Gepresenteerd in het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, als onderdeel van het publieksprogramma van de tentoonstelling To Orient before Sunset.
To Orient before Sunset: Digging, Naming, Mapping
To Orient before Sunset: Digging, Naming, Mapping brings together three artistic research projects by Dakota Guo, Andong Zheng, and the duo Jiyoung Yim and Lou Kim. Challenging the assumed authority and moral neutrality of archaeology, botanical taxonomy, and cartography, the exhibition questions how these disciplines have served as instruments of extraction, ordering, and displacement, transforming situated relations into fixed categories and rendering land, species, and even the dead into know
Harry Penningsprijs 2026
Genomineerd voor de 7de Harry Penningsprijs bij Pennings Foundation, Eindhoven. Het geselecteerde project werd getoond in de groepsexpositie van 7 maart t/m 9 mei 2026. Tijdens de prijsuitreiking op 18 april 2026 werd Andong Zheng door de jury uitgeroepen tot winnaar.
How to (Un)Name a Tree: At the Hortus
How to (Un) Name a Tree werd in Hortus Botanicus Leiden gepresenteerd via een artist talk, een panelgesprek en een maandlange sitespecifieke installatie. Voor deze installatie transformeerde Andong Zheng een camera lucida tot een kijkinstrument voor een zelfgepubliceerd pamflet, geplaatst voor een jonge Huangshan-den in de tuin. Talk en gesprek sloten aan bij de Science Café-reeks van de Hortus en bereikten ook een publiek buiten de kunstwereld.